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= David_Hawkins_(philosopher) =
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Introduction
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David Hawkins (February 28, 1913 - February 24, 2002) was an American
scientist whose interests included the philosophy of science,
mathematics, economics, childhood science education, and ethics. He
was also an administrative assistant at the Manhattan Project's Los
Alamos Laboratory and later one of its official historians. Together
with Herbert A. Simon, he discovered and proved the Hawkins-Simon
theorem.
Early life
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David Hawkins was born in El Paso, Texas, the youngest of seven
children of William Ashton Hawkins, and his wife Clara ' Gardiner. His
father was a prominent lawyer noted for his work on water law, who
worked for the El Paso and Northeastern Railway, and was one of the
founders of the city of Alamogordo, New Mexico. He grew up in La Luz,
New Mexico.
Hawkins attended Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, but left
after his junior year to enter Stanford University. He initially
studied chemistry, but then switched to physics before finally
majoring in philosophy. He was awarded his B.A. in 1934 and M.A. in
1936. While he was there, he met Frances Pockman, a teacher and
writer. They married in San Francisco in 1937. They had a daughter,
Julie.
In 1936, Hawkins went to the University of California, Berkeley, to
work on his doctorate. He became friends with Robert Oppenheimer, with
whom he liked to discuss Hindu philosophy and issues in the philosophy
of science such as the uncertainty principle and Niels Bohr's
complementarity. In 1938, Hawkins and his wife, Frances, joined the
Berkeley campus branch of the Communist Party of America. He earned
his Ph.D. in 1940, writing his thesis on "A Causal Interpretation of
Probability".
Manhattan Project
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After graduating, Hawkins worked at Berkeley until May 1943, when
Oppenheimer recruited him to work at the Manhattan Project's Los
Alamos Laboratory, as his administrative assistant. "I was intrigued
by the thought of being part of this extraordinary development," he
later explained, "And it was still of course in those days entirely
focused on the terrible thought that the Germans might get this weapon
and win World War II."
Hawkins saw his role as that of a go-between, mediating between the
civilian scientists and the military leadership at Los Alamos, but he
also found a kindred spirit in the Polish mathematician Stan Ulam, who
was working in Edward Teller's "Super" Group. They investigated the
problem of branching a neutron multiplication in a nuclear chain
reaction. Stan Frankel and Richard Feynman had tackled the problem
using classical physics, but Ulam and Hawkins approached it using
probability theory, creating a new sub-field now known as branching
process theory. They investigated branching chains using a
characteristic function. After the war, Ulam would extend and
generalise this work. He described Hawkins as "the most talented
amateur mathematician I know".
Hawkins is credited with the selection of the Alamogordo area for the
Trinity nuclear test, but he declined to watch it. His final
assignment at Los Alamos was as its historian, writing the history of
Project Y. He completed this work in August 1946, covering the history
of Project Y up to August 1945, but it remained classified until 1961.
He was a founding member of the Federation of American Scientists.
Later life
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With World War II over, he left Los Alamos to become an associate
professor of philosophy at George Washington University, but left in
1947 to join the faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Together with Herbert A. Simon, he discovered and proved the
Hawkins-Simon theorem on the "conditions for the existence of positive
solution vectors for input-output matrices". This macroeconomic
theorem helped economists better understand the interconnectedness of
various sectors of an economy.
On December 20, 1950, Hawkins was called before the House Un-American
Activities Committee. He testified that he had been a member of the
Communist Party from 1938 to 1942. The testimony of Hawkins and his
wife Frances was released publicly in January 1951, resulting in an
outcry led by 'The Denver Post'. There were calls for his dismissal,
but he had tenure and, under the university's law, this could only be
revoked for incompetence or moral turpitude. The regents took a vote,
and were split evenly; the numbers went in his favor when one of them
died. He remained at the University of Colorado until he retired in
1982, except for periods as a visiting professor at Berkeley, the
University of North Carolina, Cornell University, Simon Fraser
University, the University of Michigan and the University of Rome. He
was also a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and the American
Council of Learned Societies.
From 1962, Hawkins increasingly took an interest in early childhood
education and in improving elementary school science education. With
his wife Frances, they established the Elementary Science Advisory
Center to improve the standard of science teaching, which he directed
from 1965 to 1970. In 1970, they founded the campus-based Mountain
View Center for Environmental Education with funding from the
university and the Ford Foundation, which provided advanced education
for elementary school teachers. He was a consultant to the National
Institute of Education and the National Science Foundation. In 1981,
he received a $300,000 "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation.
Hawkins died at his home in Boulder, Colorado, on February 24, 2002.
He was survived by his wife Frances and daughter Julie.
His papers are in the library of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In 2013, the University of Colorado hosted an interactive exhibit in
Boulder about his life and work, 'Cultivate the Scientist in Every
Child: The Philosophy of Frances and David Hawkins'. Over the
following five years, the exhibit travelled to Wyoming, New Mexico,
Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Massachusetts, New Hampshire
and California, before arriving in its permanent home at Boulder
Journey School in Boulder.
License
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hawkins_(philosopher)
